Communication devices such as personal computers, handheld devices including wireless mobile devices (cellular phones, PDAs, etc.), among others, have or are coupled to a display screen for presenting information to users. Information is presented by way of a graphical user interface (GUI) of an application or the operating system for the device, for example, and may include information displayed in a tabular form. Spreadsheets are one example of a tabular form where information is displayed in rows and columns of a table. Other information in columnar form includes a single column list. Popular examples of information displayed in tabular form are email and other message box lists where message information is listed in rows having columns of message information such as Time, To, and Subject data.
Many of these devices include a trackball or similar pointing device for moving a focus (e.g. a cursor) about the GUI to bring particular GUI controls into focus to use and control the device. Typically the controls are selected by moving the pointing device, thus scrolling the focus, substantially along a first axis such as up/down the screen.
The size of the screen (i.e. the overall screen dimensions at a particular resolution) often limits the amount of information that may be viewed at any one time. This is particular true for wireless mobile devices. In many cases, the information for a particular column entry (sometimes referred to as a “cell”) or multiple cells in the column cannot be displayed in the space allotted in the GUI. Only a portion of the available information is displayed, usually from left to right, truncating information to the right that does not fit.